TY - CHAP

T1 - Knowledges

AU - Berling, Trine Villumsen

PY - 2012

Y1 - 2012

N2 - Scientific knowledge in international relations has generally focused on an epistemological distinction between rationalism and reflectivism over the last 25 years. This chapter argues that this distinction has created a double distinction between theory/reality and theory/practice, which works as a ghost distinction structuring IR research. While reflectivist studies have emphasised the impossibility of detached, objective knowledge production through a dissolution of the theory/reality distinction, the theory/practice distinction has been left largely untouched by both rationalism and reflectivism. Bourdieu, on the contrary, lets the challenge to the theory/reality distinction spill over into a challenge to the theory/practice distinction by thrusting the scientist in the foreground as not just a factor (discourse/genre) but as an actor. In this way, studies of IR need to include a focus on the interrelationship between theory and practice in specific domains, while at the same time foregrounding the own position of the researcher. The transformation of European security in the 1990s is taken as an example of how an IR analysis changes focus when seeing knowledge as Bourdieu.

AB - Scientific knowledge in international relations has generally focused on an epistemological distinction between rationalism and reflectivism over the last 25 years. This chapter argues that this distinction has created a double distinction between theory/reality and theory/practice, which works as a ghost distinction structuring IR research. While reflectivist studies have emphasised the impossibility of detached, objective knowledge production through a dissolution of the theory/reality distinction, the theory/practice distinction has been left largely untouched by both rationalism and reflectivism. Bourdieu, on the contrary, lets the challenge to the theory/reality distinction spill over into a challenge to the theory/practice distinction by thrusting the scientist in the foreground as not just a factor (discourse/genre) but as an actor. In this way, studies of IR need to include a focus on the interrelationship between theory and practice in specific domains, while at the same time foregrounding the own position of the researcher. The transformation of European security in the 1990s is taken as an example of how an IR analysis changes focus when seeing knowledge as Bourdieu.

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9780415528528

T3 - New International Relations

SP - 59

EP - 77

BT - Bourdieu in International Relations

A2 - Adler-Nissen, Rebecca

PB - Routledge

CY - Abingdon

ER -